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The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the iridescent tapestry of star birth in a neighbouring galaxy in this panoramic view of glowing gas, dark dust clouds, and young, hot
stars. The star-forming region, catalogued as N11B lies in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), located only 160,000 light-years from Earth. With its high resolution, the Hubble Space Telescope is able to view details of star formation in the LMC as easily as ground-based telescopes are able to observe stellar formation within our own Milky Way galaxy.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)/HEICDownload larger image version here

Our neighbourhood galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) lies in the
Constellation of Dorado and is sprinkled with a number of regions
harbouring recent and ongoing star formation. One of these star-
forming regions, N11B, is shown in this Hubble image. It is a
subregion within a larger area of star formation called N11. N11 is
the second largest star-forming region in LMC. It is only surpassed
in the size and activity by 'the king of stellar nurseries,' the
Tarantula nebula (or 30 Doradus), located at the opposite side of
LMC.

The image illustrates a perfect case of so-called sequential star
formation in a nearby galaxy - new starbirth triggered by old massive
stars. The sequence begins with a cluster of stars outside the top of
the Hubble image which led to the birth of the collection of blue-
and white-coloured stars near the left of this new Hubble image.
These stars are among the most massive stars known anywhere in the
Universe. The region around the hot stars is relatively clear of gas,
because the stellar winds and radiation from the stars have pushed
the gas away. When this gas collides with and compresses surrounding
dense clouds, the clouds can collapse under their own gravity and
start to form new stars. This chain of consecutive star birth
episodes has been seen in more distant galaxies, but it is shown very
clearly in this Hubble image.

Farther to the right of the image, along the top edge, are several
smaller dark clouds, or globules, of interstellar dust with odd and
intriguing shapes. They are seen silhouetted against the glowing
interstellar gas. Several of these dark globules are bright-rimmed
because they are illuminated and are being evaporated by radiation
from neighbouring hot stars. A generation of new stars is now being
born inside these globules.

In N11 altogether three generations of stars can be found.
'Grandmother' stars (outside the top of the Hubble image) that have
carved a large superbubble, leading to the birth of the cluster of
massive blue-white 'mother' stars seen near the top of this image.
These in turn gives birth to new star 'babies' inside the dark
globules.

This image was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2
using filters that isolate light emitted by oxygen (a 1200 seconds
exposure) and hydrogen gas (a 1000 seconds exposure). The science
team, led by astronomers You-Hua Chu (University of Illinois) and
Yšel Nazť (Universite de LiŤge, Belgium) are comparing these images
of N11B, taken in 1999, with similar regions elsewhere in the LMC.
This colour rendition was co-produced and is being co-released by the
Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre and the Hubble
Heritage Team (STScI).

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation
between ESA and NASA.